Programming

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Taiwan's leader urges China to wade into democracy, Hong Kong-first - LA Times. Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, in an unusual criticism of the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, said Friday that China should embrace democracy, and start by allowing free elections in Hong Kong. Ma is often viewed at home as too friendly toward China, but his comments reflect local support for the tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents who launched democracy protests Sept. 27 in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, where they have shut down streets for more than a week. “Thirty years ago, when Deng Xiaoping was pushing for reform and opening up in the mainland, he famously proposed letting some people get rich first,” Ma said in his speech on Taiwan’s National Day, referring to the economic reformist who ruled China from 1978 to 1992.

“So why couldn’t they do the same thing in Hong Kong, and let some people go democratic first? Taiwan, 100 miles off China’s southeastern coast across the Taiwan Strait, is ethnically Chinese but has been self-governed since the 1940s.
Is Coding the New Literacy?
In the winter of 2011, a handful of software engineers landed in Boston just ahead of a crippling snowstorm.

They were there as part of Code for America, a program that places idealistic young coders and designers in city halls across the country for a year. They'd planned to spend it building a new website for Boston's public schools, but within days of their arrival, the city all but shut down and the coders were stuck fielding calls in the city's snow emergency center. In such snowstorms, firefighters can waste precious minutes finding and digging out hydrants. A city employee told the CFA team that the planning department had a list of street addresses for Boston's 13,000 hydrants. "We figured, 'Surely someone on the block with a shovel would volunteer if they knew where to look,'" says Erik Michaels-Ober, one of the CFA coders. Screenshot from Adopt-a-Hydrant Code for America Now, Boston has adoptahydrant.org, a simple website that lets residents "adopt" hydrants across the city.

Python-RPi

How has an increase in system complexity affected new programmers?
This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites. Adam asked: As a "new" programmer (I first wrote a line of code in 2009), I've noticed it's relatively easy to create a program that exhibits quite complex elements today with things like .NET framework, for example. Creating a visual interface or sorting a list can be done with very few commands now. When I was learning to program, I was also learning computing theory in parallel.

Things like sorting algorithms, principles of how hardware operates together, Boolean algebra, and finite-state machines. But I noticed if I ever wanted to test out some very basic principle I'd learned in theory, it was always a lot more difficult to get started because so much technology is obscured by things like libraries, frameworks, and the OS. See the full, original question here. Beware bloated data structure. Lab. Provoked by our curiosity, we are always in search of new forms of expression. We gain abundant experience from our experimental work, enabling us to apply new and unconventional methods of design in our projects.

In addition to commissioned work, we use every opportunity to work independently, to experiment and to discover new things. Spurred by curiosity, we recognize in each new endeavor the chance to gain both experience and knowledge. We achieve both know-how and experience from our experimental work, to which are also able to apply both novel and unconventional design methods. In our lab projects we are able to explore how new approaches in technology and design can be united. Sort by tag Heatmapvirtual thermo reactive surface KinectKinect experiment and library overview. Most Popular Programming Languages of 2014 — CodeEval. Every year we release data on the "Most Popular Programming Languages" based on thousands of data points we've collected by processing over 100,000+ coding tests and challenges by over 2,000+ employers. This gives us a pretty good idea on what the trends are for the upcoming year in terms of what companies are looking for.

It's data we hope will be especially helpful for new computer sciences graduates or coders looking to stay ahead of the curve.
Why does the government disallow dynamic languages?
This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites. Patrick asks: I know some people who are currently working on a project for the US military (low security level, non-combat, human resources type data). An initial state of the project code was submitted to the military for review, and they ran the program through some sort of security analyzer tool. It returned a report of known security issues in the code and required changes that needed to be implemented before delivery of the final product.

One of the items that needed to be resolved was removal of part of the project that was written in Ruby as it is a dynamic language. What is the background/reason for not allowing a dynamic language to be used in a secure setting? See the full, original question here. It's the interpreter Thomas Owens♦ answers (22 votes): Dangerous tricks For example:
50 of the Best Online Courses and Resources for Learning Web Design.

10 Programming Languages You Should Learn in 2014. The tech sector is booming. If you've used a smartphone or logged on to a computer at least once in the last few years, you've probably noticed this. As a result, coding skills are in high demand, with programming jobs paying significantly more than the average position. Even beyond the tech world, an understanding of at least one programming language makes an impressive addition to any resumé. The in-vogue languages vary by employment sector. Financial and enterprise systems need to perform complicated functions and remain highly organized, requiring languages like Java and C#.

Media- and design-related webpages and software will require dynamic, versatile and functional languages with minimal code, such as Ruby, PHP, JavaScript and Objective-C. With some help from Lynda.com, we've compiled a list of 10 of the most sought-after programming languages to get you up to speed. 1. Where to learn it: Udemy, Lynda.com, Oracle.com, LearnJavaOnline.org. 2. 5. 7. 8. 9.
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Blog | The Story of Code Pilot. Today we’re making Code Pilot open source. It’s been an amazing ride with this product for us as a company and me personally, so I wanted to take this chance and tell you its story.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Keyboard I started using computers professionally around 1997. And by professionally, I mean using it for something more than just playing games and browsing the Internet. In my case it meant focusing on Linux and more programming than I was doing as a kid. So for me back then it was all about the command line which is where you can’t really do much with a mouse. I had to type in every command, every option, make mistypes, correct them and so in time, my typing skills started to depend more and more on my muscle memory than me being able to see the keyboard.

I started looking for ways to cut down on time spent typing. I lost my love for using the mouse right around that time. TextMate to the Rescue fo would only match files whose names start with “fo,” like: But…
Red Hat and CentOS become Voltron, build free operating system together. Red Hat and the CentOS Project today said they will team up to build what they called "a new CentOS" in a bid to accelerate adoption of the free operating system. CentOS is a clone of Red Hat's most important product, compiled from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It could be seen as taking paying customers away from Red Hat.

The two organizations could also be bitter rivals, but today they showed that they think working together can benefit both the customers who pay Red Hat gobs of money for enterprise-class Linux and those who use CentOS for free. Although Red Hat gives away all of its source code, it makes more than a billion dollars a year. Software subscription prices guarantee updates, patches, bug fixes, support, training, compatibility with mission-critical applications, and legal protection from patent trolls that target open source users. Although Oracle was the target, the move affected CentOS, too. So what's in it for Red Hat?
How to deal with a difficult programmer on an open source project?
This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites. Nathan2055 asks: I have an open source script for a specific site (I'm trying not to call anything by name here) that a few other developers and I recently moved to GitHub.

We've been joined by several new developers since we moved to the new system, including one very active one in particular. However, this active one has started changing a lot of the project. First of all, he deleted our versioning system (not like Git, but like that—we called it versions v4.1.16) and said it would be better to simply push the code to the site when we think it's ready. The thing that made me just about ready to pack my bags and go was the push script. So now I want to know what to do. See the full, original question here. Our way or the highway gbjbaanb answers (45 votes): You can quit. Where do you stand?
Codecademy Releases Its First Educational App, A.K.A. My New Subway Time Killer. Although I write a lot about apps and Internet stuff, I never really learned to code. I threw the “really” in there to soften the blow, but the fact is, I straight up don’t know how to do it.

I started learning at one point in middle school, but my high school didn’t push CS, and by college I spent all of my waking hours writing for the student newspaper or reading books written by dead white guys. So it just never happened. But it’s on my to-do list. I swear. Today Codecademy made its first foray into the app space and released an intro to coding course designed to take less than an hour to complete.

The launch was timed to coincide with Computer Science Education Week, one of the goals of which is to get 10 million students in the U.S. to take an hour of coding. Codecademy for iPhone will eventually be its own independent learning platform, CEO and founder Zach Sims said. The app is meant to be a super-easy onboarding ramp to future coding. Some of the questions seem ridiculously easy.
Such browser so html5. 3D printing Cloud Engine | 3D printing. Learn Programming With 'Coding for GOOD'
Watch: Our Deepest Fears, Revealed By Google Auto-Complete.

“I’m 10 and pregnant.” It pops up in the white auto-suggest drop-down before your finger can even leave the zero key. And that’s only because Google has seen that exact search hundreds, thousands--who knows how many times before. The moment is jarring, but Marius Budin pushes forward right through this soft spot. His short, Life Through Google’s Eyes, is the simple search bar, recording what autofills for the query "I’m [X] and," inserting the numbers 10 through 85.

Through the teen years, pregnancy is a primary concern--and in a dark turn of irony, it’s counterbalanced by concerns over virginity. But in reality, as big data shows us that we’re all searching for these same answers, maybe it’s time we just admit: We don’t need to air our concerns in anonymous solitude. [Hat tip: FlowingData]
This is what a DDoS attack looks like | Apps and Software. By now, almost everyone has at least heard or seen the term DDoS. Unless you’re fairly geeky, however, you might not know what a distributed denial-of-service attack is or how one works. Even if you are a dyed-in-the-wool geek, chances are you don’t know what a DDoS attack looks like. Thanks to the security staff at VideoLan, developers of the highly popular VLC media player, you can now catch a glimpse. This is what it’s like to be on the receiving end: According to VideoLan’s Ludovic Fauvet, the servers at get.videolan.org have been dealing with around 400 requests every second. By singling out a common user agent, they’ve been able to tweak Nginx to leave those connections lingering in limbo.

Prior to fortifying their defenses, the VideoLan crew was seeing around 200 downloads of VLC every second — which totalled nearly 30Gbps. So who’s behind the attack on VideoLan and what’s the motivation?
First website ever goes back online on the open Web’s 20th birthday. Twenty years ago today, the organization that created the World Wide Web made its underlying technology available to everyone on a royalty-free basis.

To commemorate that occasion, the very first website is now back online at its original URL. Physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1989 at CERN, the European nuclear research and particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN didn't try to keep the technology to itself. The Web became publicly accessible on Aug. 6, 1991, and "[o]n 30 April 1993 CERN published a statement that made World Wide Web ('W3', or simply 'the web') technology available on a royalty-free basis," the organization wrote today. "By making the software required to run a web server freely available, along with a basic browser and a library of code, the web was allowed to flourish.

" Snapshots of the original website were preserved, but not the site itself at its original URL, until now. The first website you can view today is actually a 1992 copy.
Andrew Weissmann: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power.
Image courtesy Google Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year. Last week, during a talk for the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann discussed some of the pressing surveillance and national security issues facing the bureau.

He gave a few updates on the FBI’s efforts to address what it calls the “going dark” problem—how the rise in popularity of email and social networks has stifled its ability to monitor communications as they are being transmitted. Either way, the FBI is not happy with the current arrangement and is on a crusade for more surveillance authority.
Blockly - A visual programming editor.